OVBlogger: Blogging and SEO

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I was over at Blogosphere News today and see that we’re getting yet another upgrade to WordPress–version 2.6, which is due out in August. The changes are interesting, but not sure how awesome. They’re integrating with Google Gears and making it harder to lose posts if your browser crashes and such. I mean, those things are interesting, but…  it may be a developer dream. Since I’m not one of those, I’ll withhold judgment until I see the results.

You can check out the post at BlogHerald.com

I also watched a video today that was pretty interesting from Michael Gray of GrayWolf’s SEO Blog

He says that it’s best to make your blog super simple for the GoogleBot. Well, we knew that, but here’s something I never thought of. (And Duh… shame on me.) Michael says that when you’re choosing a category for your post, it’s best to keep it in ONE category, not two or three or the “very bright for a 5-year-old” GoogleBot may think that you have dupe content on your blog.

Well…

We all know that’s bad.

I’m going back and changing the posts that I just had to add categories to for my readers’ sake.

But, then, who needs readers?

I mean, I want to be a good SEO person and do all the right SEO stuff and make the Google ghods love me, but hey…

The audience is really what matters, eh?

From here on, I may try to keep my categories singular.

And then again, maybe not.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Duplicate content has been the bane of search engines for quite some time. Why? Because search engines simply don’t want to return 10 results and have it all be the same article, video, etc. Spiders love fresh meat, and if they think yours is slightly overdone, you will have issues.

Don’t get me wrong…

You won’t pay a penalty in most cases, unless the dupe content is on your own site. Then, the heavy hands of the Google ghod will pound you into SERP (search engine results page) oblivion.

I have concrete proof of this.

I have a client with a big membership site. It’s in constant need of content, and I was providing it for the blog. The person in charge of the site decided that he could use the same content on the front page, and WHAM! The site dropped from #3 to #602 the moment the spiders found it.

Here’s the proof that dupe content was the problem: When I removed the duplicate items, we shot right back to #3 within a day or two.

However, most often marketers use dupe content in article directories, or they use the same content on their blogs as is on their website. Though this won’t raise a penalty, it won’t help you, either. Only ONE site will get credit for that content (at least at Google) and it may not be yours, even though you originated it.

Fresh content is best.

If you can’t write two articles, write one and then, rewrite it completely, making it fresh and new again. It’s a lot of work, but hey… If you’re in this to win, you don’t want to waste time sending out content that won’t win you any laurel leaves, either, right? Take the time to create quality content, put it out there, and watch to see what happens. You’ll should be happily surprised.

Popularity: 35% [?]